No. Porn has not driven even a fraction of the progress on the progress on the internet. Not even close to one.
- images - payment systems - stored video - banner advertising - performance based advertising - affiliation - live video - video chat - fora
Etc... AI is a very logical frontier for the porn industry.
That's ok.
> The first applications weren't porn-based.
They most definitely were, it is just that you are not aware of it. There runs a direct line from the 1-900 phone industry to the internet adult industry, those guys had money like water and they spent a fortune on these developments. Not all of them worked out but quite a few of them did and as a result those very same characters managed to grab a substantial chunk of early internet commerce.
the internet adult industry is not the same as the internet. And if you;re trying to say the internet was developed for the sake of the internet adult industry, you're sounding circular.
Porn and piracy outfits have historically adopted and pushed forward the bleeding edge of the internet. More recently that role has shifted towards the major platforms operated by BigTech. That's only natural though - they've concentrated the economics sufficiently that it makes sense for them.
But even then, take video codecs for example. BigTech develops and then rolls things out to their own infra. Outside of them it's piracy sitting at the bleeding edge of the adoption curve right now. The best current FOSS AV1 encoder is literally developed by the people pirating anime of all things. If it wasn't for them the FOSS reference encoder would still be half assed.
